Encore, Mr. Miller

From today’s editorials: Happy birthday to the wizard behind the Albany Symphony. The best way to celebrate is to make a commitment to keeping the region’s arts scene alive.

What’s left to say or do, really, in David Alan Miller’s honor on his 50th birthday? What now for the director and conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, especially after that magnificent celebration and concert at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall on Saturday night?

Quite a bit, in fact. It just requires imagination of the sort that for Mr. Miller is an overflowing staple.

Look at what he’s done. And look at what others in the arts have done.

As a music venue — for what Mr. Miller prefers to call “orchestra” or “concert” music, not the dreary sounding “classical music” — Albany is firmly on the national map, thanks to his 18 years with the ASO. The list of citations includes the selection of Mr. Miller to conduct the symphony at a festival of North America’s most improvising orchestras at Carnegie Hall in May.

It would be quite an intriguing parlor game to gather the sharp minds of the Capital Region and imagine what sort of place we’d be living in if our other institutions — in commerce, in sports, in government — performed at the level that the ASO and other arts organizations do.

And it would make for a horribly depressing version of the same game to ponder the region without the ASO, without the Capital Repertory Theatre and Proctors, cq without the Albany Institute of History & Art, without the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and Tanglewood, without museums extending from the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. Imagine public theater limited to the state Legislature.

To have that discussion now, of course, would be to have it in an economy that’s difficult for most everyone this side of Wall Street, and even more brutal for arts institutions. To think that the Albany Symphony thrives on a budget of just over $2 million. Others make do with much less.

To endure means reaping the boundless energy behind the promotional and fundraising skills that Mr. Miller and his colleagues possess. It means being creative in ways where creativity hasn’t been required.

For everyone else doing all they can to keep the arts alive in the Capital Region, Mr. Miller’s birthday is the perfect time to marvel at the magic behind his music and all the treasures beyond it.